We don’t need another version of “Silent Night.”

Christmas music: It’s unavoidable now, infiltrating our radio stations, dominating our streaming services, and pumped into department stores like a narcotic, gingerbread-tinged gas. It’s almost two weeks out from Christmas, so we’re quickly coming up on its annual apex. And although we know a bunch about the yearly demand for holiday tracks, it’s also worth looking into the supply. The modern Christmas canon is mainly from the middle of the 20th century, but every year artists drop new Christmas tracks, and some of these new stabs at holiday tunes do catch on, to a degree: 2011’s “Mistletoe” by Justin Bieber is still in substantial streaming demand, as is 2013’s “Santa Tell Me” by Ariana Grande and 2014’s “I’ll Be Home” by Meghan Trainor.

Still, not all artists are so creative. If you’re going to cut a Christmas album, you’re gonna have to toss a few covers of the classics in there. I wanted to know what the most-covered holiday songs are, and Eliot Van Buskirk at Spotify — which has identified more than 1.3 million tracks of holiday music — was kind enough to send over the data they had. So, for instance, Spotify could tell us that the song “Deck the Halls” is associated with 9,146 individual tracks — appearances on different albums by different artists — in the Spotify database.1

“Silent Night,” “White Christmas” and “Jingle Bells” are the most-covered songs in the holiday canon. In the right-hand column, I’ve identified (with a Christmas tree!) those songs that have lapsed into the public domain. Unsurprisingly, the free use of some of these songs seems to be a motivation for people to cover them.

Is the ambient noise of Christmas defined entirely by boomer nostalgia and the vagaries of U.S. copyright law? I mean, the newest song on that list, “Blue Christmas,” came out during the LBJ administration, and 60 percent of them came out before 1923, so yes, yes it is.

This phenomenon — that many of the songs that artists cover the most are free and in the public domain — can also be seen in movies. In 2014, I pulled several IMDb data sets for an article about movies nominated for an Oscar. One of these sets was the soundtracks for movies listed on the site, and several of the most common songs that appeared on those soundtracks turned out to be holiday songs.

“Jingle Bells,” for instance, was the most common song in the entire batch of movie soundtracks. I imagine this is mostly because if you need to set the mood and tell the audience it’s the holiday season, playing “Jingle Bells” as diegetic sound is a pretty good way to get the point across.

The preference for the public domain is even more striking here: Nine of the top 10 songs are copyright-free. I’ll guess the reason for this is that unless it’s essential to the plot, picking a free holiday song to set the mood over one where you’d owe royalties makes financial sense and doesn’t throw the movie off.

Going back to the Spotify data, though, given what we know about what people actually listen to, it’s pretty clear that the supply for many of these songs wildly outpaces the demand. Only 13 of the top 50 covered songs appeared in the top 50 most-streamed holiday songs during the first week of December. The most recent song to both inspire many copies and see substantial streaming volume is 1985’s “Last Christmas” by Wham!.

The moral of the story? If you’re going to lay down the hottest holiday album of 2016, society probably doesn’t need another recording of “Silent Night.” We do, on the other hand, need thousands more recordings of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” because that song is great4 despite being the only song ever recorded with a worse understanding of the continent of Africa than the Toto song “Africa.”

Finally, here are the most-streamed Christmas songs on Spotify in the week ending Dec. 10. Topping the list are the queen and king of Christmas music, Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé.

Most popular Christmas song on Spotify, week ending Dec. 10

RANK

SONG

ARTIST

1

All I Want for Christmas Is You

Mariah Carey

2

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Michael Bublé

3

Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

Brenda Lee

4

Mistletoe

Justin Bieber

5

Fairytale Of New York (feat. Kirsty MacColl)

The Pogues

6

White Christmas

Bing Crosby

7

Last Christmas – Single Version

Wham!

8

Santa Tell Me

Ariana Grande

9

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Andy Williams

10

Mary, Did You Know?

Pentatonix

11

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Frank Sinatra

12

The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)

Nat King Cole

13

Blue Christmas

Elvis Presley

14

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Sam Smith

15

A Holly Jolly Christmas – Single Version

Burl Ives

16

Jingle Bell Rock

Bobby Helms

17

Merry Christmas Everyone

Shakin’ Stevens

18

Mer jul

Adolphson & Falk

19

This Christmas

Chris Brown

20

Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Band Aid

21

Tänd ett ljus

Triad

22

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Seth MacFarlane

23

Feliz Navidad

José Feliciano

24

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday

Roy Wood

25

Run Rudolph Run

Chuck Berry

26

Christmas Lights

Coldplay

27

Driving Home for Christmas

Chris Rea

28

Santa Baby

Eartha Kitt

29

I’ll Be Home

Meghan Trainor

30

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town

The Jackson 5

31

My Only Wish (This Year)

Britney Spears

32

Home for Christmas

Maria Mena

33

Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town – Single Version

Bruce Springsteen

34

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Christina Aguilera

35

Himmel På Jord

Kurt Nilsen

36

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays

*NSYNC

37

Sleigh Ride

The Ronettes

38

Last Christmas

Carly Rae Jepsen

39

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Glee Cast

40

Christmas Time Is Here – Vocal / Album Version

Vince Guaraldi Trio

41

Little Saint Nick

The Beach Boys

42

Baby It’s Cold Outside (duet with Michael Bublé)

Idina Menzel

43

Jingle Bells

Diana Krall

44

Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

John Lennon

45

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Dean Martin

46

Step Into Christmas

Elton John

47

Wonderful Christmastime

Paul McCartney

48

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Perry Como

49

One More Sleep

Leona Lewis

50

Merry Xmas Everybody

Slade

51

Mary’s Boy Child / Oh My Lord

Boney M.

52

Man With The Bag

Jessie J

53

Text Me Merry Christmas (feat. Kristen Bell)

Straight No Chaser

54

Christmas Eve / Sarajevo

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

55

The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)

Alvin & The Chipmunks

56

Merry Christmas Darling – Album Version/Remix

The Carpenters

57

White Christmas (feat. Clyde McPhatter & Bill Pinckney)

The Drifters

58

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Darlene Love

59

Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Gene Autry

60

Happy Christmas (War Is Over)

Maroon 5

61

My Favorite Things

Kelly Clarkson

62

Jingle Bell Rock from Daryl

Daryl Hall & John Oates

63

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Judy Garland

64

Stop the Cavalry

Jona Lewie

65

Frosty The Snowman

Ella Fitzgerald

66

Angels We Have Heard On High – Duet with Brian McKnight

Josh Groban

67

Merry Christmas Darling

Christina Perri

68

Carol of the Bells – Voice

Peter J. Wilhousky

69

Winter Wonderland

Tony Bennett

70

I Believe In Father Christmas

Emerson, Lake & Palmer

71

Santa Baby

Kylie Minogue

72

Lonely This Christmas

Mud

73

White Christmas

Nashville Cast

74

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Mary J. Blige

75

Cuddle Up

Catey Shaw

76

White Christmas

Katy Perry

77

2000 Miles – 2007 Remastered Version

Pretenders

78

Christmas In Harlem

Kanye West

79

What Christmas Means To Me

Stevie Wonder

80

All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)

Nat King Cole Trio

81

Wonderful Dream (Holidays Are Coming) – Radio Version

Melanie Thornton

82

I En Stjerneregn Af Sne

Mads Langer

83

Juligen

Just D

84

Jesus & Josefine

Julie & Martin Brygmann

85

God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen

BYU Vocal Point

86

Jag kommer hem igen till jul

Peter Jöback

87

When a Child Is Born

Johnny Mathis

88

The Christmas Waltz

She & Him

89

Last Christmas – Studio Version

Jimmy Eat World

90

All My Christmases

Jillian Edwards

91

Dear Santa

Mr Little Jeans

92

It’s Christmas Time Again

Backstreet Boys

93

Jul Det’ Cool

MC Einar

94

Mistletoe

Colbie Caillat

95

Jul i Angora

Drengene fra Angora

96

Stay Another Day

East 17

97

Another Christmas

Amanda Jenssen

98

Where Are You, Christmas?

Faith Hill

99

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Jessica Simpson

100

Hoping for Snow

The Vamps

Footnotes

They sent over data of about 900,000 songs with at least 10 tracks associated with them. I pulled those songs with at least 300 tracks, cleaned the data — combining “O Christmas Tree” and “Oh Christmas Tree” into a single entry, for example — and ranked them by number of associated tracks.

Fun fact: Christmas music is one of only a few types of music, kids’ music too, that Spotify has to laboriously identify with algorithms and flag. People don’t want to hear it outside of a specific time of the year, so identifying holiday tracks is of particular importance to the streaming service.

This is a little out of date — early 2014 — but cleaning is a massive pain, so throw me a bone here.